


Lifeline

by sapphireswimming



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003)
Genre: Angst, Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa, Friendship, Gen, Gen Work, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-07
Updated: 2012-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:53:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23266513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphireswimming/pseuds/sapphireswimming
Summary: She wasn't really Gracia, but she wasthere.
Relationships: Edward Elric & Alternate Gracia Hughes
Kudos: 1





	Lifeline

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted here: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8522124/5/At-the-End-of-All-Things

She would ask and he wouldn't answer. That was the way their relationship worked, their easy friendship. They accepted each other unconditionally.

He accepted that she wasn't really Gracia, not his Gracia, not Hughes' Gracia. And he couldn't treat her as such. Couldn't ask her for a slice of her apple pie, couldn't joke around about Hughes' penchant for snapping a picture at every opportunity, asking after Elysia… the daughter that didn't exist.

She accepted that he wasn't quite there, that his eyes rarely looked at her so much as _through_ her and that he wasn't like other people native to Germany, but had a radically different set of ideas and couldn't care less about politics or living by the rules set by society and these dangerous times.

He needed someone to anchor him in this new town and new life. She could provide that and knew, somehow, that she was the only one who could. Who would.

So she did. She became the mother and protector that he needed desperately even though he would never admit wanting it as much as he needed it.

He needed the questions, the knowledge that someone cared about him and where he had come from (wherever that may be). Needed the offered hand, to know it would be there if he chose to take it, not that he ever would.


End file.
